


CAS 54-11-5

by akacz



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-01
Updated: 2020-10-01
Packaged: 2021-03-08 04:15:25
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,275
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26739466
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/akacz/pseuds/akacz
Summary: She's nicotine, Tracer thinks.
Relationships: Lena "Tracer" Oxton/Widowmaker | Amélie Lacroix
Comments: 6
Kudos: 26





	CAS 54-11-5

She's nicotine, Tracer thinks. 

The obvious comparison would be to a spider, covered with eyes, waiting to kill the fly, hiding in the dark. Maybe even a slender glass of dry red wine, something French and expensive and rarely pulled out. 

She wishes she were alcohol instead. It'd be easier to deal with. She knows how to work off a hangover, if she fails at avoiding one in the first place, and she knows that the easiest way to not get drunk is to just not drink. Simple as. Sure, you indulge a little now and then, but you don't make a habit of it. 

Cor, if only, but that's not what Widowmaker is. 

The first time she tasted one of the poison traps, the noxious smoke and lingering fumes burned into her nose and stinging her eyes despite the goggles, practically gagging over the strychnine flavour. She'd had a cough for hours until Angie had figured out which toxin was circulating in her lungs, and every time a hacking fit came over her she worried to this day it was the lingering effects of that irritating gas. 

What could she do though? She had to go back out there. So back out there Tracer went, again and again, into the venomous mist, and although she sometimes had enough charge to rewind out of the cloud, sometimes she didn't. Slowly, by Tracer standards, and quickly, by Literally Anyone Else standards, her tolerance to the poison built up until it was merely an irritant instead of a game-ender. 

She'd never call it comforting, but it became... familiar. That stinging in her nose that told her a trap had been triggered. That Widowmaker was there, or at least had been there. It becomes familiar, and in familiarity she finds a certain level of expectation. 

She expects her lungs to burn when she runs, not only from exertion but also from the atomic scars left on her organ tissue by the harsh chemicals she inhales. She gets suspicious when she doesn't smell it at some point during a battle; wonders where Widowmaker is lurking, gets distracted by it a few times before shaking the thought off like water off a Labrador. 

There's a restlessness, worse than normal, that jiggles her leg when she tries to sit still after a few days of being denied the familiar burn. 

The scent of gunpowder, arcane and archaic, gives her almost the same effect, she realizes one day after being quick enough to dodge the poison cloud and not clever enough to plan ahead for where she'd land afterwards . She's knocked out of her trajectory mid-air by Widowmaker grappling between rooftops and sending her spinning aside with a sharpened boot heel and lands on her side, scraping along the rocks littering the top of the flats. 

(What's with those rocks anyway. How do they get up there. Did someone put them down on purpose all the time. Why would they do that. These were the questions that kept her up at night, and sloshed half-formed in her bleary brain now.)

She starts to push herself to her knees. Widowmaker is there before she can, dropping insultingly gracefully from the thin cable and releasing the grapple with a quiet hiss of air that matches the hiss of pain scraping out between Tracer's teeth. Instead of a long sniper barrel, however, its the blunter snout of the assault rifle alt that is shoved in Tracer's face. It smells like dark, hot metal, and there's barely-there fumes that curl in her nose and mouth and taste like bitter powders trapped in smoke and fire. 

A deep, shuddering breath wracks Tracer's body as she looks death in the face. 

She's scared to death of losing her life, but she's not scared of this. It's a weird, semi-numb feelings. Runner's high was nothing compared to soldier's high, and she feels awake, alert, grounded by the pain and the anxiety and the desperate _need_ to be aware, to focus. She focuses on the high cheekbones and the glint of exposed golden eyes and goes deaf from the rapid ricochet shattering the rocks underneath her. 

A second later, Widowmaker is gone, and Pharah is swooping in, trying to reel in her panic as she apologizes if her rockets hit Tracer, she panicked she panicked she's sorry --

Tracer laughs it off and accepts a hand to help her to her feet. 

A second later again, she tips over and vomits off the side of the roof, her nerves overloaded. 

Late at night, she struggles to sleep. Dogs bark in distant roads where they have enough lawn for outside dogs, and much closer some housecats yowl, desperate for attention Tracer is not about to be involved in giving. There's a couple fighting upstairs and not for the first time she wishes she coulda been pickier about which floor she's housed on, but while Overwatch is many great things, a well-paying employer it isn't. Not bad, but not anything to write home about, not on that front. 

Fed up with rolling around in bed, she gets up and clicks on the lights. She paces her room a few times before circling her flat, as much as the loose route through the whole thing could be called a circle, and she paces and she paces and she realizes she's gripping her hands into fists and loosening them again and ugh she paces, restless literally restless, needing something she doesn't have. 

The door slides open with a soft shush and she steps onto the balcony, leaving it open because oh no, what's the worse that could happen, she gets even more fresh air? 

She stares at the waning moon, and she wonders. She wonders what keeps Widowmaker up all night, while she's always after her in particular it seems, wonders if she actually drinks red wine, if it's true she used to be afraid of spiders, wonders if she has other vices than drinking, wonders if she smokes, if she ever smoked. 

There's nothing healthy about spending so much time thinking about someone that wants to kill her if she can, and yet that's what Tracer does. All her concentration these days goes to Widowmaker, trying to figure her out, get inside that head and see what makes her tic. It gives shape to an otherwise formless day, the planning and pondering and analyzing. It's almost therapeutic, if being addicted to wanting to punch someone in the face is therapeutic.

It probably isn't. 

She thinks about it anyway, because Widowmaker is something worse than nicotine, addicting and terrible and ingrained into her life to the point she'd fall apart if she didn't know she could depend on certain things like the way Widowmaker lilts her letters and the burn of smoke and the heat signature left behind by a hot barrel by her head. 

One day she'll have to stop chasing the high of victory against Widow. One day, which could be any day, she'll stop lighting a fire between them on purpose to set her of, and find another method of taking out her emotions that doesn't involve breathing in nerve gas or having the wind knocked out of her or pacing like a rat in a maze when she can't do these things. 

One day, but not tonight, as she sees the single dot of red flash across her eyes as the scope sweeps over the balcony in a warning. 

She grins, goes back inside, picks up her bomber jacket, and checks the charge on the accelerator. 

Tonight, she just needs one more hit to take her mind off things. That's all.


End file.
